<p>Hi there. The topic of ad blockers tends to generate some heated discussions around these parts, so I'm going to keep this really simple: if you're running an ad blocker, this is a polite request that you white-list this Web site and allow the ads to load. Here's why: I work hard to keep the ads on Thoughts Media sites non-intrusive; I say no to pop-ups, pop-unders, full-page ads, ads with sounds, etc. I know that those types of ads are irritating, and I value the readership of everyone who visits our sites. I don't want to irritate anyone with our ads.</p><p>What you may not realize about online ads is that, for the majority of them, when they simply load, that helps me pay the bills (our server bill alone is almost $500/month.). Ad blockers stop the ads from loading, which means they generate no revenue. That hurts my ability to generate income from this site - I have bills to pay just like you do. You don't have to click on the ads - just letting them load helps us out a lot. If you do click on them, all the better - that helps us get better advertisers because they know you're interested in the ads. It will help us continue to provide you with the content that you come here for, and that benefits you in the end. So please white list this Web site in your ad blocker.</p><p>If you have a particular dislike for the in-line text advertising - Vibrant Media's IntelliTXT ads - you can easily opt out of ever seeing those on any Thoughts Media site. <a href="http://forums.thoughtsmedia.com/725148-post19.html" target="_blank">Here's how</a>.</p><p>As a side note, I have a personal "1 visit, 1 click" policy in which, when I visit a site and read/watch some content on it, I take a quick look to find an ad that I'm interested in and click on it. It only takes a few seconds of my time to do, and it's my way of giving back to that site, thanking them for creating that thing I just read/watched. The Internet would be a very different place if everyone had a similar policy. Just a thought to ponder as you head into the weekend. :-)</p>

First Google trained people to believe that ads only pay if you click on them. People don't know or understand advertising comes in different models for the publishers. There are those paid when an ad is shown, there are those paid when an ad is clicked and there are those paid when an action is taken (a product is sold, or someone signs up for a service, etc).

Then there's the impression that ads will slow down the Internet experience. While this might be true for someone using dial-up five years ago, in these days of fast broadband, CDNs (content distribution networks) and other improvements, this is not really true anymore.

I posted about this here. Basically we have been working to reduce the page load time for a few months now. Everything from code, to database, to client-side script changes, to using different DNS providers around the world, to using a CDN to distribute images closer to our users.

One of the changes is to change our pages to use javascript defer. We use a tool (made in New Zealand) to automatically do it for us. It just happens ad blockers don't like the javascript code generated, thinking it's an ad loading code.

We use Google Search in our site. And guess what? When people use ad blocks, Google Search won't work anymore, because it's now part of a bigger script, that ad blockers think are loading ads.

So ad blockers not only cause some slow down by hooking to everything in a page, but also interfere directly with the user experience by indiscriminately filtering code with no context awareness.

I don't use ad blockers. I think it's disrepectful to publishers. But as a publisher I do all I can to get my pages loading faster, every day.

(side not: we are probably doing it right. Google Webmasters tells us that our average global page load time is down from 10 seconds to about 4 seconds now, in the last nine months).

I white listed the Thoughts* sites the last time Jason asked us to do it. I thought I'd at least give it a try. I know Jason works very hard to keep the ads clean and friendly. Realizing everyone's embarrassment level is different, I haven't seen anything I would consider embarrassing at work or in front of the kids. None of them talk or make noise unless you specifically click on them. They don't block content as they do on many other sites. It's a simple request and I hope everyone does it.

Great, relevant post Jason, and picking up on Mauricio's reply, we often work hard on the backends of our sites to provide an optimal user experience, the opposition to google served ads, seems to be growing. Advertising in general is our bread and butter. The aim being to negatively gear a site, ad revenue offsets site costs, unless you are a site qwner you are oblivious to this. It's on the web, it's available. Really a great thing to educate people on the way this works.

I work hard to keep the ads on Thoughts Media sites non-intrusive; I say no to pop-ups, pop-unders, full-page ads, ads with sounds, etc. I know that those types of ads are irritating, and I value the readership of everyone who visits our sites. I don't want to irritate anyone with our ads.

Cool, thanks for taking a reasonable stance on it. I don't run ad blockers, but I use my browsers' built-in pop-up blockers and I block flash (with ClickToFlash for Safari and FlashBlock for Chrome). I assume that affects your ad revenue just like an ad blocker, so I whitelisted your sites.

BTW, I use flash so little that I've never bothered to whitelist any sites before... I wan't even sure how to or if it was even possible (turns out that it's easy).

I always feel sympathy for you when you make this reasonable plea. However, I still struggle with actually doing it. As a visually impaired person I find the often flashing and animated adds very distracting noise which reduces the accessibility of the site for me. I do, therefore, choice to filter them out.

Equally, I really appreciate the Thoughts Media sites and whilst it won't pay for the servers there should be a personal thank you slowly (elected for free delivery) winging its way to you from your Amazon wish list.

I always feel sympathy for you when you make this reasonable plea. However, I still struggle with actually doing it. As a visually impaired person I find the often flashing and animated adds very distracting noise which reduces the accessibility of the site for me. I do, therefore, choice to filter them out.

That sounds perfectly reasonable to me - I appreciate that if your circumstances were different, you'd want to help me out. That means a lot to me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iznotgold

Equally, I really appreciate the Thoughts Media sites and whilst it won't pay for the servers there should be a personal thank you slowly (elected for free delivery) winging its way to you from your Amazon wish list.

You didn't have to do that, but I appreciate it and thank you for that.